December 11, 2006

House of Mystery #277 [1980]

As far as I know this is the only example of a DC comic with only a cover among the Ditko contents, no interior art. The story that this cover illustrates does have a similar scene to this, drawn by Howard Chaykin and Al Milgrom, but interestingly what the caption describes isn't what's actually going on.

It's a nice cover though, feeling a lot like some of the generic ones that Ditko did for Charlton in the 1970s, with a lot of classic Ditko elements, the large floating heads, the sneering laugh, those creepy slightly crazed eyes. In fact, the whole layout is so Ditko and so Charlton that I wouldn't be surprised if it was intended for Charlton (which had stopped running new Ditko material about a year earlier) and inspired the panel in the story.